When Tara shoots a gun-wielding criminal who burst into a hair salon, she puts herself in the crosshairs of his vicious older brother. While she grapples with her situation and the resulting PTSD, Sue and Lucy take care of a dog.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Avenging the Villain: Tara shot Hector Perez after he robbed a jewelry store, threatened the occupants of a hair salon with a gun, and tried to shoot one of them for moving when she obliviously came out of a room. His older half-brother, Carlos, doesn't care about the mitigating circumstances in the slightest.
- Break-In Threat: Tara shoots and kills a criminal, and his brother tries to get revenge. He leaves a note in her car (which is locked and in a secure garage) saying he can get to her whenever he wants. Tara had been trying to get rid of Bobby, who was following her, but she realizes how serious the situation is upon seeing the note.
- The Bus Came Back: Amanda, the young deaf witness from "The Girl Who Signed Wolf", returns. She takes an instant liking to the dog and is hopeful that she can convince her dad to keep him.
- Chekhov's Gun: Early in the episode, Tara puts the dog's photo on all sorts of lost pet websites. Much later, his owner comes to get him, saying he saw his picture on one of the websites.
- A Day in the Limelight: Tara gets special focus in this episode.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The FBI agents lampshade to one another that Crazy Loco's nickname is pretty redundant, considering what "loco" means in Spanish.Lucy: Doesn't "loco" mean "crazy"? So he's "Crazy Crazy"?Jack: He's got a real commitment to being crazy.
- The Dreaded: Carlos Gonzales, aka Crazy Loco, is well-known and deeply feared in the underworld. When his brother is killed, none of the people on the street want to help the FBI investigate. The agents also manage a successful sting to capture one of the other robbers because nobody wants to buy the jewelry, fearing that Crazy Loco would punish them for buying the jewelry that his brother got killed by stealing.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: One of the robbers initially agrees to cooperate with the FBI to bring down Gonzales. However, he reneges when Gonzales threatens his mother, unwilling to put her in danger and unconvinced that the FBI could protect her, despite their promises to that effect.
- It Gets Easier: Toyed with but ultimately averted. When Tara deals with the aftermath of killing someone for the first time, she initially feels no remorse and fears she has become a heartless FBI agent. She even contemplates quitting. At the end of the episode, Sue comes upon Tara suffering a breakdown in the back room (though it's amazing that someone clearly suffering post-traumatic stress in such a situation isn't offered counseling). Tara says tearfully that she thought her heart had been stolen, but it had only been lost.
- Let Me at Him!: While they're confronting Crazy Loco about threatening Tara, Loco suggests he might "say hello" if he happens to see her. Jack has to hold Bobby back from getting into a physical fight with him.
- Meaningful Rename: The dog's owner initially calls him Buddy when he comes to pick him up, rather than Togo, which is what Sue and Amanda had been calling him. When he decides that his dog is better off with Amanda, he calls him Togo as he returns him to her, indicating that he's giving up ownership.
- Neverending Terror: Defied by Tara, who plans to use herself as bait to catch Crazy Loco. When Garrett tries to say it's too dangerous, she says that she doesn't want her life continually disrupted by looking over her shoulder for her criminal stalker. The trap works, meaning Tara only has to deal with her PTSD.
- Pet's Homage Name: The landlady, who's irritated at Sue keeping the small dog in the apartment, dubs him Togo after Nancy Drew's dog. Sue and Amanda happily go with it.
- Red Baron: Carlos Gonzales is better known as "Crazy Loco."
- Unsuccessful Pet Adoption: Subverted. Just after Amanda has convinced her dad to keep the dog, his original owner turns up. There's a tearful scene of Amanda unwillingly saying goodbye...only for the dog's owner to return at the end of the episode. Having rethought matters, he concluded it was better for the dog to stay with Amanda. He's always traveling, whereas she can be there for the dog much more regularly.
